Macbi wrote:I wonder if this will attract lots of new users to the forum in the same way that Gemini or Copperhead did? Maybe we should post some links on HackerNews and r/cellular_automata to get the publicity ball rolling?

Well, I heard about it before either of those but yes I'm new here specifically to join the congratulations. Never thought I would see the day!

Macbi wrote:I wonder if this will attract lots of new users to the forum in the same way that Gemini or Copperhead did? Maybe we should post some links on HackerNews and r/cellular_automata to get the publicity ball rolling?

Tom and I are intending to write a paper on the subject, and I'll post a (less technical) cp4space article describing the discovery and the ideas involved -- ideally could you please wait until then before 'going public'?

What do you do with ill crystallographers? Take them to the mono-clinic!

Macbi wrote:I wonder if this will attract lots of new users to the forum in the same way that Gemini or Copperhead did? Maybe we should post some links on HackerNews and r/cellular_automata to get the publicity ball rolling?

Tom and I are intending to write a paper on the subject, and I'll post a (less technical) cp4space article describing the discovery and the ideas involved -- ideally could you please wait until then before 'going public'?

Well, it's already been posted on Reddit, and anyone who sees this website can find out about it anyway, so it's basically already gone public.

Macbi wrote:I wonder if this will attract lots of new users to the forum in the same way that Gemini or Copperhead did? Maybe we should post some links on HackerNews and r/cellular_automata to get the publicity ball rolling?

Tom and I are intending to write a paper on the subject, and I'll post a (less technical) cp4space article describing the discovery and the ideas involved -- ideally could you please wait until then before 'going public'?

Well, it's already been posted on Reddit, and anyone who sees this website can find out about it anyway, so it's basically already gone public.

I mean prior to posting on Hacker News, Slashdot, and the like.

What do you do with ill crystallographers? Take them to the mono-clinic!

Impressive! I had expected something to appear after those partials posted a while back, but I didn't expect a knightship to appear that quickly. My first reaction to seeing that was "Is that pattern in an OCA?"

Congratulations (sir) calcyman and (sir) rokicki! This is very impressive. I also like the name (I am a fan of monty python).I was hoping that calcyman would find a knightship with his search, but I was actually expecting him to sneakily hide it somewhere such as apgsearch or catagolue.

Yes this is almost definitely POTY. If it is, then it will be the third time in a row the POTY competition has been won by a new spaceship. The only thing I can think of that could possibly challenge this as POTY is a proof of omniperiocity.

I think for most people, (2,1)c/6 has been the most "wanted" speed, but now that it has been found, what is the most "wanted" speed? Is it c/8, (1,1)c/8, (2,1)c/7, (3,1)c/8, c/9, or c/19?

Anyway, something I'm quite interested to know is what is it about ikpx that made it succeed where many other programs have failed? With suitable modifications, would it also be more effective than gfind and zfind but for speeds like c/8?

I'd say the new most wanted speed is (3,1)c/8, since it's the simplest speed where it isn't know if it is achievable. Maybe the same tools can do the job? (With some slowdown due to the increase in period.) If they did manage to find a (3,1)c/8 then I'd expect a (4,1)c/10 or (3,2)c/10 to follow soon afterwards. After that the period might be a bit too high.

Macbi wrote:I'd say the new most wanted speed is (3,1)c/8, since it's the simplest speed where it isn't know if it is achievable. Maybe the same tools can do the job? (With some slowdown due to the increase in period.) If they did manage to find a (3,1)c/8 then I'd expect a (4,1)c/10 or (3,2)c/10 to follow soon afterwards. After that the period might be a bit too high.

There's a couple more possible knightship speeds in that window, though, namely (2,1)c/7, (2,1)c/8, (3,1)c/9, (2,1)c/9, (3,1)c/10 and (2,1)c/10. We could easily exhaust the Knights of the Round Table before we exhaust our searching technology.

Macbi wrote:I'd say the new most wanted speed is (3,1)c/8, since it's the simplest speed where it isn't know if it is achievable. Maybe the same tools can do the job? (With some slowdown due to the increase in period.) If they did manage to find a (3,1)c/8 then I'd expect a (4,1)c/10 or (3,2)c/10 to follow soon afterwards. After that the period might be a bit too high.

There's a couple more possible knightship speeds in that window, though, namely (2,1)c/7, (2,1)c/8, (3,1)c/9, (2,1)c/9, (3,1)c/10 and (2,1)c/10. We could easily exhaust the Knights of the Round Table before we exhaust our searching technology.

Although any new elementary spaceship speed is a good discovery, those aren't as interesting to me because we already know that ships can travel at those speeds (with much higher periods).

Macbi wrote:If they did manage to find a (3,1)c/8 then I'd expect a (4,1)c/10 or (3,2)c/10 to follow soon afterwards. After that the period might be a bit too high.

77topaz wrote:There's a couple more possible knightship speeds in that window, though, namely (2,1)c/7, (2,1)c/8, (3,1)c/9, (2,1)c/9, (3,1)c/10 and (2,1)c/10. We could easily exhaust the Knights of the Round Table before we exhaust our searching technology. :P

This seems like a serious case of counting chickens before they're hatched, or spaceships before they're knighted.

Unless the SAT search technique turns out to be completely different from every other search technology, things get exponentially harder every time you increase the period. Even if the increase is only something reasonable like a factor of ten or a hundred, you might be looking at 10 months of CPU time to dig up a (2,1)c/7 (versus a month for Sir Robin), and on up to a million CPU-months for (2,1)c/10 or (3,2)c/10. The numbers may look close, but the time estimates are worlds apart.

Of course something small and elegant could show up early in a search for any of these cases, but that probably won't happen for every one of those speeds -- and if you look just a little farther than the limited Monty Python cast, there are plenty of knights in the old King Arthur stories.